You shouldn’t spend money on digital marketing unless you have the proper analytics set up to measure the results. But what if customers aren’t buying something directly from your website like they would on an e-commerce store?

For local businesses, a conversion is usually when a lead contacts them. This can be through:

a contact form

a phone call

an email

a scheduled appointment

Luckily, it’s possible to track these website actions. Yes! It can be done with the power of an amazing free tool called Google Tag Manager (GTM).

How to Install Google Tag Manager on WordPress

First you need to install GTM on your site, it’s similar to Google Analytics in the sense that you just need to add a Javascript snippet to your site to be up and running. Don’t worry if you don’t know programming, you just need to be able to copy and paste pre-written code in the right place.

Here’s how you can get started with with GTM in WordPress (which is the platform we usually recommend for search engine optimization).

Wondering what can be done with this website behavior tracking tool? We strongly recommend the Measureschool YouTube channel to learn more about GTM.

Tracking Website Conversion Actions for Google AdWords

Here’s a video I recorded showing how we did this for a local real estate agent. They wanted leads for some properties they were selling, so we made sure the phone number was click to call and the email address was click to email. Then we let GTM do the hard work after this initial set-up.

They received a few leads in a matter of weeks and sold the house no problem. While that’s not hard to do in this hot Madison, WI real estate market, the realtor was pleased and now we have the set-up to repeat for future properties.

Use AdWords like the best of ’em

Do you see how even a small business can leverage advanced online marketing to bring interested people to their website and measure the results? No excuses. When it comes to paid search campaigns, it’s time for small and medium businesses to play with the big boys.

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